Yeah, "competition" in this space is a relative term. Though there used to be many more wholesale-based indie ISPs, including Distributel, Start.ca, EBOX, VMedia, just to name a few that were bought up by the big guys. They were constrained by what they could do because of CRTC rules, but at least they were additional choices for consumers.
As far as how lack of competition driving surveillance pricing goes, the topic is baked into a lot of what we do here and why we cover it in the first place. We had both Cory Doctorow and Jim Balsillie on the podcast talking about it back in February.
Yeah, "competition" in this space is a relative term. Though there used to be many more wholesale-based indie ISPs, including Distributel, Start.ca, EBOX, VMedia, just to name a few that were bought up by the big guys. They were constrained by what they could do because of CRTC rules, but at least they were additional choices for consumers.
As far as how lack of competition driving surveillance pricing goes, the topic is baked into a lot of what we do here and why we cover it in the first place. We had both Cory Doctorow and Jim Balsillie on the podcast talking about it back in February.